The Sky Archer

Sky Fighters, February 1936

The Sky Archer

The flaming rocket smashed into the side of von Jager’s ship

Balloon-Busting Was High Dive Hammond’s Hobby—Until They Sent Him Out with a Weapon He Feared More Than All the Boche!

By RALPH OPPENHEIM

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IEUTENANT “HIGH DIVE” HAMMOND was climbing. His throttle was full out, and his joystick was way back to his chest. He sat in the cockpit of his Spad like a jockey on a rearing horse, a big hard-muscled jockey, wrapped in furs against the chill dawn air. Somewhere far below it was still night, but here, at nearly ten thousand feet, the day had already come. The dawn mists

were dispersing before High Dive Hammond’s whirling propeller blade. The rushing air was cold, but the warming golden sunlight was slowly beginning to come through the top of the haze. High Dive Hammond kept climbing. His goggled face was set in grim, fighting lines. It was the reckless, hard look of a daredevil who had chosen the most perilous and split-airing type of sky-work in the whole war—balloon-busting. High

SKY FIGHTERS Dive Hammond was one of that daring company of aviators who knocked down Drachens, knocked them down as fast as the Huns could set them up. He had won his nickname because, like a high-diver, he would plunge from the heights straight and true for his balloon targets, and burn them before their ground fire could stop him. Seven of them he had knocked down to date, and now— “Trouble with this game,” High Dive Hammond was gritting beneath the mighty roar of the Hisso, “is that you can’t last long. Look at Frank Luke, the best of them all; they got him in six weeks. And right now, I wouldn’t want to bet on my own hide!” A look of cold apprehension was creeping over his hard, goggled features. Bright sunlight was slanting across his wings now; his Spad was shooting up out of the mists like a high-soaring bird— breaking into clear, translucent blue sky. He peered over the cowling rim. Below and ahead the whitish mists drifted and broke under the glaring sun, and as they slowly parted like a curtain, the awakening earth loomed into visibility. A livid swath of fire and smoke showed ahead—the flaming Marne battlefront. Swiftly, Hisso full out, High Dive Hammond was climbing to get over that fiery expanse: his alert gaze was focused on the sky across the lines. That sky was empty now. But at any moment, Hammond knew, Drachen Number 10 would appear there. Drachen Number 10! Hammond’s lips tightened, his eyes going grim behind their goggles. To a balloon-buster, all balloons are different—each has its individual personality, is a greater or lesser foe. And of all the balloons the Huns ever floated, Drachen Number 10 was the bugaboo, the most formidable, impossible enemy bag to

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challenge the skill and nerve of any “buster.”

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OW High Dive Hammond was out to bring out Drachen Number 10, and he did not have any illusions about the job. The memory of those who had gone before him was burned into his brain. The dawn haze below his climbing Spad was practically cleared away now. Under the brightening morning sun, the relief-map world spread out in distinct visibility for miles and miles. The fiery line of the battlefront had now become a huge, flaming cauldron of hell, full of bursting shells and smoke, and crisscross lines which were Yank and German trenches. Hammond glanced at his altimeter needle. It was trembling close to the fifteen-thousand-foot mark—almost three miles from the war-blasted earth. The Hisso engine began to sing in a high, protesting key: the controls became sluggish in the thin ether. Hammond slowly eased the stick forward, was leveling. Way up in the high upper reaches, he was coursing straight ahead now—coursing for the Hun lines. And in the next instant, his big body tensed in the cockpit—a cry ripped from his throat. For from the earth just over the lines, a bulky greyish shape was rising slowly but steadily into the sunny sky. Like some huge, bloated sausage, it rose from the cable which anchored it to earth. “Drachen 10—that’s her!” High Dive Hammond gritted. His impulse was to slam the throttle open, hurl faster toward that rising, bloated shape. But his experience as a balloon-buster restrained him. The higher the balloon was, the better—for they would start to pull it down the moment it was attacked, and on the ground it could

THE SKY ARCHER not be gotten at all. So, instead of putting on speed, High Dive Hammond proceeded cautiously now. Like a furtive bird of prey, his Spad stole through the high thin sky. His goggled eyes remained fixed on the slowly rising Drachen. Higher, higher it soared— he could see its swaying wicker basket now; he could see the long cable, going down to a truck-winch below. “If only I could attack the bag the usual way,” Hammond was cursing now. “Just dive on it and get it with tracers, instead of—” His grim glance swept out to the lower wing surfaces on either side of him. There, affixed to steel holders on either wing, lay four small, dart-like shapes—two on each side. They lay pointed outward, toward the air ahead. And from their rear ends, electric wires were strung to the Spad’s cockpit. A special panel on Hammond’s dashboard was the terminal for those wires. Four buttons jutted out blackly, ready to make the contact as soon as they were pressed.

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IGH DIVE HAMMOND looked over this whole strange paraphernalia with grim misgivings. His mind went back to a fateful afternoon a week ago at the 15th Pursuit Squadron, where he nested. Colonel Sampson, grizzled, veteran skipper of the 15th, had lined the whole outfit on the tarmac. They had stood there, a dozen hard-fighting, tough-faced buzzards. “I never thought I’d live to see such a bunch of ninnies under my command!” the C.O., a master of invective, had rasped out. “Flyers! Bah! A bunch of scared kiwis! And what has you all so buffaloed? A Hun Drachen—full of gas! Just one Drachen—and you can’t get it! Well, I know one bird who wouldn’t say ‘can’t’ in

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a case like this! If that balloon were ours instead of the Jerries’—von Jager would have had it down long ago!” At the mention of that name, every man had stiffened: every eye had narrowed with flaming hate and fury. Von Jager! It was this latest and greatest German ace of aces who had been the cause of the 15th’s present shameful predicament. Von Jager was a balloon-buster—and a devil of a one. No ground defense seemed impenetrable enough for his attacking rednosed Albatross. Until von Jager had started his balloon campaign the Allies were content to take what Drachen victories their few balloon-busters could get. But when von Jager got so many Allied bags that the heavy Allied artillery was virtually rendered blind, reprisal became necessary: the Hun guns must be equally blinded. A counter-balloonbusting campaign had been launched. It had been successful until the stumbling block was reached—Drachen Number 10. “Oh, I know the alibis!” the C.O. continued his scathing denunciation. “You claim Drachen 10 has some supercamouflaged ground defense that no one can get through or spot. Well, all right then, since none of you are good enough to get at that balloon, you’re going to get a new little toy to help you.” The “new toy” had arrived on the drome soon after. It proved to be a special phosphorous rocket, the invention of the famous military scientist, Lord Clivens. The Clivens rockets, as they were called, had only to touch the surface of a balloon to ignite it. They had a long range, could be fired from a plane which could remain out of range of the balloon’s anti-aircraft guns. They were fired from the lower wing of a crate, by electrical contact. All of which seemed excellent—an

SKY FIGHTERS infallible new method for getting balloons. But in practice, the Clivens rockets proved to be a dangerous, tricky toy— more dangerous to the planes using them than to the balloons they were designed to ignite! For rockets cannot be aimed like bullets: a slight swerve, a trifle of wind resistance—and they can go completely haywire. The Clivens rockets had a nasty habit of curving back like a boomerang toward the very plane from which they were fired. At other times they would set fire to a wing while zooming off, or even jam in their holders. And those rockets, taken on by the 15th to combat Drachen Number 10, had killed as many of the 15th’s pilots as had the ground defense which was now avoided! It was not their English inventor’s fault. Clivens had done his best, had invented the best weapon possible for attacking balloons from long range. To get the balloon by ordinary bullets was out of the question. To get it by one of the rockets was still a possibility, so the method had to be continued. And so, for the last week, the 15th— Hammond among them—had dreamed rockets, eaten rockets, talked rockets and toasted the dead who had been doomed by rockets. To cover their own fears, they even jested about the little darts. Meanwhile, High Dive Hammond, having no faith in the rockets at all, had been working fiercely but vainly on another track. Knowing that the cause of all of this was von Jager, he had gone out each day on the warpath for the red-nosed Albatross of the Boche ace. But von Jager was elusive as an eel. He always appeared at some balloon Hammond did not happen to be near. By the time Hammond reached the scene, all he found was the smoldering ashes on the

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ground—the Boche was safely away.

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ND last night, after the 15th’s mess, after a day in which another man had died by those tricky rockets, a beaten, redrim-eyed Colonel Sampson had called High Dive Hammond to the operations, looked at him point-blank. “We’ve got to get that bag tomorrow, Hammond—and no maybe about it!” he rasped. “Owing to von Jager’s wiping out all our bags, the German artillery is threatening to rout all our divisions from the trenches. I’m going to schedule the patrols—every half hour one or two men are going to go out after that balloon until it’s down! If you want to go, you’re first on the list.” He poured out two stiff drinks of cognac, and looked at the star balloonbuster with an affection his hard eyes didn’t hide. Hammond reached for the cognac. “I can’t get a crack at von Jager—so I’m trying my luck with those arrow things,” he said coolly. And in the furtive dark of the following dawn, High Dive Hammond climbed into his Spad which had four Clivens rockets on its wings. Two other Spads were also on the tarmac, ready to set out an hour later. Their pilots, hard-boiled Wilkins and young Trask, both wished Hammond godspeed. “Save us the trip if you can,” Wilkins grinned. “If not, we’ll meet you in hell anyway,” said young Trask, with cheerful courage. Leaving them behind, High Dive Hammond had zoomed into the chill sky with his four rockets. And now, cautiously, he was approaching the air above the rising Drachen Number 10. Slowly but steadily, that big balloon was still rising down

THE SKY ARCHER there. Six thousand feet now—seven; Hammond estimated as, miles higher, he continued his grim approach. Then at last, at over eight thousand feet, the balloon stopped rising. It came to a swaying stop, drifting with the wind, the ominous black German cross showing on its upper surface.

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N the next instant, High Dive Hammond saw something happen on the battlefront below. He saw the flashing geysers of heavy German shells, bursting amid the Yank trenches, blasting craters of destruction and slaughter. Drachen Number 10 was doing its work. The observers in its swaying basket were phoning the Allied positions to the Hun heavy artillery—ranging the slaughtering fire. And Hammond could see that there was no compensating Allied heavy fire in return. “Damn that Boche!” Hammond cursed aloud. “I’ll put out this balloon as sure as von Jager’s put out ours—even if it’s the last thing I do!” Closer and closer now. Stealing in high above that floating Drachen. Hammond snatched a pair of binoculars from a cockpit compartment, adjusted them to his goggled eyes. Within the glasses the Hun ground beneath the balloon loomed close and distinct. He could see the coal-scuttlehelmeted, grey-clad Germans swarming at the winch, see the telephone operator in the truck. But he could not see any antiaircrafts or ground pom-poms. There was only green foliage, brush, trees—earth. “Tricky camouflage, all right!” the Yank rapped. “Never dream the place is a beehive of guns!” As he now swept high over the balloon, he started instinctively to pull back his stick again, to force his protesting crate to still higher altitude. But sudden remembrance checked him. This was not

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to be one of his hair-raising high dives. Again his glance swept to the four dartlike shapes on his wings. A full-speed dive would surely smack him into those rockets when he fired them. He must not develop too much wind pressure. “Confound the new-fangled things!” he cursed. “If only there was a chance to do this job the regular way!” Fearful of gathering too much speed from a dive even from here, he eased the stick forward, cut the throttle-and furtively, cautiously, he was piquing down in a wide circle, getting closer above that swaying bag. He peered down at it. How easy it looked—just a big hunk of bologna floating in the peaceful air! And yet, nearly a dozen men had died trying to knock it down. High Dive Hammond snapped himself from these conjectures, as he noted that the shells the Drachen was ranging were scoring with greater accuracy on the Yank trenches to the west. His lips set into a tight, determined line. Once more he swung his Spad in a circle, got it into a position above and to one side of the swaying Drachen. For the last time he looked over the Clivens rockets—the wire-connected buttons on the dashboard. “If only they work this time!” he gritted. Then, teeth clenched, he pushed the joy-stick forward. The Spad dipped, careened into a steep dive. Not the hellbending vertical high dive, but a slower, swooping descent. Down he went flitting—and slowly the grey sausage-like Drachen loomed toward him. But before he was even near it, hell itself seemed to burst forth from the ground below, erupting from the very surface of the earth! Up into the sky there hurled such a spew of flaming anti-aircraft

SKY FIGHTERS fire as High Dive Hammond had never seen in his life. Grumpf! Grumpf! Grumpf! The deepthroated Archie barks shattered the roar of his own Hisso. Black mushrooms with hearts of flame stained the blue on all sides below—”flaming onions” hung like weird bulbs on a string. A score of Archies and pom-poms were blazing away down there—trying to reach for the Spad which had been spotted the very instant it started down! Several of the shells burst close enough to rock High Dive Hammond’s crate—but as yet he was out of range of the rest. He peered down, straining his eyes to keep track of the Drachen through the accumulating smoke and shrapnel. Even now, though he could see myriad flashes from the guns, Hammond could not see the camouflaged weapons themselves. They were all around, somewhere under that trick foliage, or whatever it was. Grumpf! Grumpf! The mighty barrage continued to arc up, forming a literal solid wall above the balloon—a wall ready to envelop the slow-descending Spad. Grim-faced, he held his dive until he was barely on the top surface of that black wall of death. Then, wildly, he was jockeying his plane, with his eyes still fixed on the smoke-surrounded balloon far below. He looked at his slanting wings. Their forward edges were both slanted toward that Drachen. The range was long—but it should be right. Quickly, all in this last instant, Hammond reached with his left hand for the first button on the panel. His fingers rested on it, hesitating an infinitesimal second. Then, when another instant’s delay would have made him dive into the hell of antiaircraft fire—Hammond breathed a quick little prayer and pressed the button.

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Hiss-s-s-s! The blinding light of the igniting rocket dazzled him from the left lower wing. Even at the instant that the streaking dart of fire whisked into space, Hammond was madly pulling back his stick, jerking his Spad out of the dive.

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S the crate lurched upward, screaming in every strut, Hammond’s goggled eyes looked wildly for his discharged rocket. A thrill of exultant hope swept through him then—for the rocket was actually streaking down, drawing a line of livid white through the black antiaircraft smoke. It was headed for the balloon! Straight and true, it was whizzing for that swaying bag, and— Then a frenzied curse of helpless despair burst from Hammond’s throat. For as if to mock him, that rocket suddenly veered erratically from its straight course! It avoided the balloon as if deliberately— curved way out from the bag and, on a crazy tangent, dropped, burning phosphorescently, to the ground below. Cursing, Hammond was whipping up into an Immelmann turn now, pivoting up and over in the sunny sky. He had aimed the rocket as best he could; yet it had missed the target completely, missed it by hundreds of yards! Once more he peered down through the continued smoke of shells. His rage increased as he saw that the Huns were not even pulling the balloon down. Even they had no faith in those rockets—did not seem to fear them! “Well, Clivens had to shoot two rockets before one went right,” Hammond gritted then. “And I’ve still got three left. God, how I wish I could show these Jerries something to stop their laughing!” And once more, cursing, he flung his wings down at a slant for that smokeobscured balloon. Once more he dived

THE SKY ARCHER toward the top of that blazing anti-aircraft wall. This time he went so close that he could hear the shrill whizz of shrapnel, smell the acrid stench of the smoke in his nostrils.

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GAIN he aimed his wings as best he could. And then pressed another button—the one on the right side this time. Sizzling, the rocket shot out from the right lower wing surface. No sooner was it off than High Dive Hammond gave a cry of sudden, wild alarm. Even as he was pulling up his crate, he saw the treacherous, flaring dart curve back—it was a boomerang! Hell-bent, a mass of blinding fire, it was coming straight for his Spad! And if it so much as touched the ship it would surely set the crate ablaze, for the phosphorous would burn through anything. With mad haste, Hammond flung his joy-stick way over to one side, stood on the rudder bar. The Spad seesawed crazily, side-slipped like a frantic moth. The blinding phosphorous rocket came on— with a treacherous hiss, it grazed past Hammond’s side-slipping left wing, missing it by scant inches, and finally burned itself out somewhere in the sky beyond. Sweat broke out on High Dive Hammond’s goggled face, despite the cold upper air. Shaken, cursing, he was mechanically climbing again—away from the anti-aircraft fire below. He felt foolish, ridiculous. The Boches below must be laughing their heads off! Hammond shook his head. “By God,” he cried, “I’m through with these lousey Limey darts! They’re no good, and the devil take them!” It was no use continuing the suicidal farce. Bitterly, with a sense of utter defeat and failure, Hammond continued to climb now—and as he left the balloon further

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and further below, the anti-aircraft fire subsided; the flaming, smoking wall of shells sank out of the air. What to do now? Drachen Number 10 still swayed in the air; while Hammond sat helpless in his plane, the Hun shells ranged by the balloon continued to burst amid his own countrymen on the battlefront. And in the next instant, as he glanced at the western sky, there came a sight which filled him with fresh frenzy. Coming from the Allied lines, approaching rapidly, two Spads were hastening this way, flying wing to wing at high altitude. The half hour of his patrol was up! The C.O. had sent out two other men—Wilkins and Trask—both of them good friends, squadron comrades of his. Two more men to be sacrificed to the treacherous rockets! If Hammond gave up the job, those two buzzards would be tackling it. He knew then, with a cold tightness of heart, that he couldn’t abandon the job and leave it to those two squadron mates. He couldn’t leave the Drachen when he still had two rockets. But on the other hand, he saw nothing but his own suicide if he fired the two remaining darts. And if he died, Wilkins and Trask would still have to go down to face a similar doom! Closer and closer came those two other Spads. In minutes now they would be here. Then a sudden surge of utter recklessness took possession of High Dive Hammond. Desperation made him abandon all thoughts of caution, robbed him even of common sense. Rather than take another chance on the rockets, he preferred to stake everything on his own methods! It seemed impossible, absurd, and yet— “If I could dive fast, so fast that those anti-aircrafts won’t open up until I’m almost through—”

SKY FIGHTERS With those two Spads of the 15th coming ever closer, Hammond yanked back his stick to his chest, opened his throttle full. His Spad reared on its tail, its whirling propeller pointed toward the top of the sunny blue sky. Roaring, the plane zoomed. High Dive Hammond was climbing for the attack, climbing as he had always climbed—reaching for the highest possible ceiling. Up, up, higher and higher into the thinning vault of heaven, he urged his Spad. Seventeen thousand feet—eighteen— nineteen. Then, at last, the plane hung in agony on its own ceiling, and Hammond, breathing hard in the rare ether, leveled off. He circled and looked down. Miles below, way down through a sheer drop of space, he saw the swaying Drachen—a tiny grey sausage shape now. To the west the two oncoming Spads were two little specks. They were close, those Spads. He must finish the job before they came here. With lightning haste, Hammond examined the two breeches of the glistening Vickers guns mounted on the cowl before him. He patted them as if they were old friends—at least they would shoot straight, would not bring bullets boomeranging back! And the first half of each belt in the breeches was full of incendiary bullets. Half a belt of incendiaries: the rest tracers and plain. Carefully now he wheeled his Spad into a circle above the Drachen. He poised on four miles of space, truly like a high diver poising on the platform and gazing down into the infinitesimal tank far below. And then— With a berserk, reckless oath, Hammond slammed his joy-stick forward all the way to the fire-wall and ripped his throttle open to the last notch! The Spad stood on its head, its Hisso

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splitting the very heavens. Like a plummet, the crate was plunging almost on a vertical, plunging with gathering, breakneck speed, plunging with smoke trailing from its exhaust stacks, with the wind screaming through its flying wires and bending back its wings! High Dive Hammond sat hunched forward in the down-hurtling ship. He sat with his mouth open, with a long, curdling yell coming from his throat. He yelled to keep himself from collapsing under the mad pressure of that mad dive. Down, down, down! The Drachen loomed swiftly below, growing as if it were just being inflated. Down—down!

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HEN it happened, even as High Dive Hammond had known it must happen. Once more hell itself broke loose from the peaceful earth below the balloon. Grumpf! Grumpf! Grumpf! The terrific A.A. spew blackened the air—it rose like a storm to envelop the diving, plunging Spad. Shell-bursts blinded the eyes of High Dive Hammond, deafened his ears. He felt his Spad shiver in its plunge, as if a giant were shaking it like a rattle. He heard the death-whine of whizzing shrapnel, the wasplike buzz of pom-pom bullets. And at that moment he knew that he had tried and failed! For the balloon was still far below. Swift as his dive had been, it had not been too swift for the crack German ground guns! They were blasting him from every side, bursting at his very face! He was coughing, choking, in the smoke fumes. He heard shrapnel and bullets hacking through his fuselage, heard struts cracking and wires snapping. Madly, futilely, now, he was still trying to head for the balloon—his stubborn eye refusing to lose sight of that

THE SKY ARCHER bag below. But he knew even now that he was never going to get close enough to use his guns. The A.A. fire was blasting him off his course, slowing his dive. In cold horror, he saw the flashes of the score of guns on the ground. He saw gleaming, up-pointed muzzles and— Even in that hectic instant, amid that maelstrom of hell, his eyes popped wide. He saw gun muzzles! Crazily, he was peering down through the bursting smoke puffs. .And his amazement grew. He could see coalscuttled Germans on the ground running around crazily, like chickens. He could see that there was some kind of fire down there. Foliage was burning, blazing and— But that wasn’t foliage that was burning! It was an enormous screen, a camouflage screen with fake, painted foliage on top of it. It was burning away rapidly, like a curtain. And as it burned, a pit was being revealed below it—a pit in which were those up-pointed, blazing antiaircraft guns. Their crews, protected from the fire behind their steel shields, were busily working the weapons. At first High Dive Hammond wondered what had started this conflagration. Then memory came like a bolt from the blue. The area of this fire was the exact place where his own first phosphorous rocket—the rocket that had missed the balloon—had landed. That rocket had ignited the inflammable camouflage screen! Even with shells bursting around him, howling in his ears, High Dive Hammond was laughing crazily. That useless, newfangled rocket had removed the camouflage down there, and he was able now to see the guns which ranged him. With the speed that comes only to a desperate man, he spotted a particularly dense battery of A.A.s –saw that it was their well-aimed fire which was menacing

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his Spad the most. A wild, insane sense of joy surged through the reckless Yank. He was back in his element now; he knew what to do and just how to do it! A quick shove on his rudder and stick—and his lurching Spad curved wildly in its dive. The A.A.s, as if sensing his purport, blazed away with new fury. The Spad lurched, vibrated in every fiber as it struggled on through that hellish storm. Then, though the A.A.s were still blasting the air around him, High Dive Hammond knew that he was no longer in such a hopeless predicament. For, by his last wild, reckless maneuver, he had put the Drachen between his Spad and that menacing anti-aircraft battery below. Temporarily at least, that hydrogen-filled balloon was a shield; the battery down there did not dare to fire for fear of hitting the balloon.

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OYOUSLY, High Dive Hammond got his battered crate back into a furious, break-neck dive. His yell was a yell of savage glee now as he went plunging down anew for the balloon at a mathematically calculated angle. Now the balloon itself was descending. The Huns at last were scared. But though the balloon was descending, its observers did not yet jump from the basket. Evidently they had orders to continue ranging the Yank battlefront as long as possible. This, as well as the knowledge that if the balloon descended much lower he would no longer be able to use it for a screen against the powerful A.A. battery, spurred High Dive Hammond to even greater speed. He coaxed his screaming, protesting Spad on down. The slower-descending Drachen loomed out of the mist of shell smoke. Its grey surfaces grew larger, until they

SKY FIGHTERS blotted out everything in front of High Dive Hammond. Rat-ta-tat-tat-tat! Rat-ta-tat-tat-tat! His twin Vickers leaped on their mounts. Twin streams of fire and smoke belched from them-the streaking, flatsounding course of incendiaries! They couldn’t have missed that grey balloon surface which filled the sky in front of them. They went tearing right into the soft, silky bag, smoking as they went. Hammond kept on going down, pumping the Drachen with burst upon burst, until that grey surface of balloon threatened to swish into his very propeller. Then, only then, did he horse back on his joy-stick—literally yanking the Spad from its dive with his own strength. At the instant he pulled up his nose, he fired the last of his incendiaries. Then, with mad haste, he was zooming his riddled crate for all it was worth, zooming while the balloon was still shielding him from the hellish A.A. fire. That was no more than a few seconds. For as he zoomed, a tongue of flame spurted out from the Drachen’s surface, went licking greedily over the huge bag. And then the conflagration filled the sky. The Drachen, its hydrogen burning furiously, collapsed in the mass of livid flames, went hurtling down in an enormous trail of oily black smoke. Just before it collapsed, three parachutes mushroomed out safe below and to one side of it. The observers had bailed out at last. Drachen Number 10 settled to earth, a smoldering heap of ruin. And though every anti-aircraft spewed in fury at High Dive Hammond, his Spad was already safely zooming out of range. Only then did the victorious balloonbuster recall Wilkins and Trask, the two other Spad-flyers he had last seen racing

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here. He glanced around, looking for them, for they must be here by now.

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N alarmed yell burst from him. For even in that second, he saw it—a flaming, spinning Spad plunging from above and to one side. Even as it fell, four dazzling rockets, ignited by the flames, scattered in all directions from it. Hammond caught a glimpse of a white, goggled face in the cockpit-two agonized arms warding off the eddying flames. Wilkins! Wilkins going down in flames, done for! Then, looking up at the sky whence that Spad had fallen, High Dive Hammond gave a fresh cry. He saw the second Spad now, the Spad of young Trask, gyrating, half-rolling wildly. It was trying to meet the swooping, vulture-like attack of a slender-nosed Boche scout—a swift, deadly Albatross whose guns were spitting! In a flash, even as his horrified eyes saw the crate of the hapless Wilkins crash to earth in a column of flame, Hammond understood. While he had dived on that balloon, Wilkins and Trask had intercepted this Albatross—which otherwise would have dived on him, perhaps caught him cold. The Hun, though the odds were two to one against him, had nevertheless managed to shoot down Wilkins—and now he was diving fiercely on young Trask. With a curse, Hammond was slamming his throttle open, zooming madly for the fray. He was still wondering how Wilkins, who had been a crack flyer and who had had another ace to help him, had been downed so quickly, downed in flames. And then, as he zoomed on up, and the planes overhead loomed into closer view,

THE SKY ARCHER High Dive Hammond saw—and his blood went utterly cold with horror and unbelief! The bullets which came from that Hun plane made a peculiar, smoking course through the air: they were like flaming hail. Incendiaries! That dirty Hun was using incendiaries against an airplane—a thing absolutely outlawed by any decent flyer! It was only at that moment, with a shock of almost insane fury and hate, that Hammond saw that Albatross clearly, saw its colors in all details—saw its nose, painted a livid, flamboyant red. “Von Jager!” the infuriated yell came from his very soul, from every fiber of his being. “Von Jager—using his lousy balloon bullets on planes!” Madly, every muscle bursting with fury, Hammond was literally throwing his Spad toward the two planes above, ignoring its tired, riddled condition. The Boche ace whom he had been seeking had shown up at last—shown up to burn poor Wilkins! A fresh cry of utter anguish burst from High Dive Hammond. For, even as he was tearing up to the scene, leaning savagely to his trips, the thing happened! Under the hissing, smoking bullets of the red-nosed Albatross, the Spad of young Trask suddenly burst into flame. The second Yank crate went hurling earthward like a fiery torch its rockets also gyrating crazily around it. “You dirty rat!” Hammond yelled hoarsely beneath the pound of his own engine. He was zooming like a streak for the Albatross, which was leveling off now. “You dirty Boche skunk! You started this whole rumpus, anyway—and now you’ve burned two of the whitest guys who ever lived, without giving them a chance. But you’ll pay!” What he could not say with his words, he was trying to say with his gibbering

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Vickers. Cursing, leaning to his sights, he was zooming up for that Albatross’ underbelly—cutting loose with both guns. Tracers—the ordinary combat-fighting tracers—cut from the two muzzles.

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OR a moment it looked as if Hammond’s very desperation was going to make his first burst score—the bullets were starting to rip into the Albatross. Then, deftly, with a grace which showed the consummate skill of its pilot, the Albatross veered out of the line of the Yank’s fire. Its black-crossed wings tilted. Like a red-nosed hawk it swooped toward Hammond, and in its cockpit, limned between the butts of the twin Spandau guns, Hammond saw a cruel, goggled face, the face of a born killer. Rat-ta-tat-tat-tat! Rat-ta-rat-tat-tat! Lividly, the guns of von Jager were once more spitting their incendiaries. Hammond cursed wildly as the twin, smoking streams hissed right between his wings, barely missing a strut. He could see the burning phosphorous hanging in the air. He had no more chance than had Wilkins, or Trask, for he had only tracers in his guns—and what good were tracers against incendiaries; any one of which would set his Spad on fire if it contacted? Rat-ta-tat-tat-tat! Again the Spandaus spat—and Hammond was half-rolling wildly, making his plane gyrate and spin like a top to dodge those treacherous streams of fiery bullets. Desperately, the Yank tried to slice in close enough to make his own non-burning bullets do damage. But those fire streams held him away. It became a nightmare to High Dive Hammond. . With his plane already battered by what it had been through, with his own energies exhausted, he knew that

SKY FIGHTERS the lunging, red-nosed Albatross must soon get in a contacting burst. And then, even as the Albatross was swooping in again for a death thrust, its Spandaus clacking out fresh streams of incendiaries, High Dive Hammond thought of the Clivens rockets. He turned his Spad at a sudden, perfect angle at the broadside of the flitting Albatross. His fingers moved desperately to the panel on his dashboard, pressed both the remaining contact-buttons, one after the other. Hiss-s-s-s! His-s-s-s-s! The rocket on the left wing arced out crazily, at an aimless, meaningless angle which hit nothing. But the one from the right wing—

12

For the first time, one of Clivens’ rockets did go straight when shot from an airplane! It went as straight as a flaming arrow to the mid-section of von Jager’s Albatross—and there it burned itself in, and flamed! The gas-line was close enough to be ignited almost instantly. A sheet of livid fire enveloped the red-nosed ship; a sheet of fire in the midst of which von Jager died the agonized death he had dealt out so often. And Germany’s ace of aces went down flaming through two miles of spaceleaving a curving black wake of smoke behind him.